Wednesday's Child

It doesn't say much for my observational skills or my critical faculties that it was only a couple of minutes ago, when the title of this post popped into my head, that I realized why every episode of Wednesday's second season is some kind of pun on the word "woe". It's not that I didn't notice. I did. I just thought "Huh. That's a dumb pun..." and immediately forgot about it.

With that in mind, it might be as well to treat anything more I have to say about the show with some caution. Clearly I am not going to be a very reliable witness. But, hey, you work with what you've got.

And in that framework, I'm going to say I found the second half of the season very much more to my liking than the first. Not that I didn't enjoy Episodes 1 to 4. I enjoyed them quite a bit. I just didn't see how they were leading to anything or even going anywhere much. 

Episodes 5 to 8 went everywhere and lead to a lot. A lot of deaths. A lot of revelations. A lot of changes. Oh, probably ought to give the spoiler warning now... but that one I used last time was really annoying, wasn't it? And everyone here can read, right? So if you haven't seen the show and plan to, maybe this would be a good time to go find something else to do. Maybe bookmark this for later. It's not like I want to lose the page views...

Okay, we all good?  Then let us continue.

I thought all four episodes on the downslope of the season were excellent. Much more engaging than the earlier ones and also less bitty. There seemed to be a lot more of Wednesday and she was more central to the action. The rest of the Addams Family were there but their presence felt more in context, rather than the somewhat shoehorned-in plot mechanics employed in Part 1, when the writers had to come up with a reason for them to be there at all. With their continuing presence explained and established, they felt more like supporting cast members, no different from the teaching staff or the Sheriff, instead of pulling all the attention to themselves and away from the actual star.

Speaking of whom, Jenny Ortega was on particularly fine form, I thought. The body-swap episode, which I loved, made it very clear just how much acting she's doing, something that's not always apparent. I don't really know her well from any of her other work, although obviously I know of it and did before the show even aired, so in my mind the Wednesday Addams character and the actor playing her were mostly interchangeable.

When the most important thing you have to do as an actor is maintain almost the exact same expression and tone of voice throughout, it makes it quite hard for an audience to realize just how much work you're doing. With Enid inhabiting her, Wednesday was free to laugh, smile, talk in something other than a monotone and even move her arms as she walked. Or, I should say, skipped!

The opening of that episode, where Enid-as-Wednesday is in full KPop dance mode, is a great shock start and one of the rare times the trope of starting the story at the end (Well, the middle in this case.) and then tossing up the "16 hours Earlier" interstitial actually worked. Honestly, it felt genuinely outrageous. I was ready to be outraged. And then I was charmed and delighted instead, which is a pretty fine bait&switch if you can pull it off.

Speaking of Enid, she gets far more to do in the second half of the season. Oh, sure, she's in the first four episodes, all the time, but she doesn't know what's going on and the atmosphere between her and Wednesday is sour and it never feels comfortable. I know, I know... Wednesday isn't supposed to be cosy. But still, you want the team to pull together, don't you? I do, anyway.

Emma Myers is excellent as Enid as always and her story arc develops in a very interesting fashion. As with everything in the show - and in most fantasy shows if we're going to be sensible about it - a lot of things don't bear close examination. I'm not entirely convinced by the Alpha lore, or perhaps it's the naming convention that's confusing. Wouldn't the Alpha be the dominant pack member? Why would the pack shun their Alpha, let alone hunt her down and kill her?

That, however, may all be explained at some future stage, most likely in Season 3, since the really excellent ending of Season 2 sets everything up for just that. And since I've mentioned it already I'll take the end out of order. I just loved it and I can tell you exactly why.

For one thing it's a set-up, not a cliffhanger. It's the best way to go out of a season, leaving your audience excited for what might come next, rather than frustrated because something got cut off in mid-flow. 

For another, it's a very open-ended set-up. It's entirely possible the third season of Wednesday might not be set in Nevermore Academy at all. All those problems with the students starting to look like they really ought to be doing post-grad work just fall away if the school setting isn't there as a backdrop. 

And for the third and possibly best thing (Apologies to the actual Thing.) it brings back Uncle Fester along with the delicious possibility of a prolonged Wednesday-Fester double act. I'd take a whole spin-off series of that. 

Season 3 could be a wilderness adventure, a road-trip or pretty much anything. Or it could be a pre-credit sequence, then back to Nevermore. For that matter, Season 3 could take place entirely in the summer break and Season 4 could be the start of the next academic year. 

I hope not, though, and I'm not sure Nevermore is even still in business, anyway. There's one line in the last episode, I forget who's speaking, where someone clearly suggests the school has closed. Possibly for good.

For that matter, I was never sure just how much of the school year had passed by the end of Season 2. All the parents turn up and everyone goes home but is that the end of the Fall semester or has a whole year gone round? Or have they all just turned up to take the kids away because the place is on fire and the Principal has just been publicly exposed as a murdering con-man?

Oh, yeah, and he's dead, too. The Principal, that is. And one of the teachers. And there's a dead Hyde on the werewolf statue. And a couple more people died earlier. It's a bloodbath (Except blood is one thing you never seem to see - it's a very not-gory show, oddly.)

Throughout the season but mainly in Part 2, a lot of people die, including a whole bunch of major supporting characters played by famous guest actors. Steve Buscemi, Christina Ricci, Christopher Lloyd... It seems a bit wasteful but then, just dying doesn't mean you're not in the show any more. Gwendoline Christie's character, Larissa Weems, Nevermore's Principal in Season 1 died but now she's back as Wednesday's spirit guide (She's great, too.) and the previous Sheriff, also killed in Season 1, makes a couple of cameo appearances in Season 2, so I wouldn't rule out a reappearance from any of them.

This is, of course, one of the things that can undermine the emotional significance of... well, any plot development really, in a show like this. It's the old horror movie problem, where no-one's ever really dead until you've seen the body. Except in fantasy, even if you've seen the body burned to a crisp, it doesn't mean whoever burned isn't coming back. 

I'm long-since inured to it after a lifetime of reading comic-books.  My reactions are in the moment. They pretty much have to be if you commit to this kind of thing. I rarely find myself saying "Well, that would never happen..." while it's happening right there before me. Doubt only comes later, when I'm thinking too much as I write something like this.

After two seasons, it's still a little hard to figure out exactly what genre of show Wednesday is supposed to be, always assuming it's intended to be any genre at all. It's a fantasy-comedy-drama but also a detective show, something I had thought might just be a season 1 thing but apparently is going to carry on. It's also quite the soap opera at times and you get the feeling someone really, desperately wanted it to be a romcom until they were talked out of it.  

There was some press about that in relation to Wednesday herself, when it was made quite plain, coming into the second season, there was to be no more mushy stuff with the title character. Probably a good decision. Wednesday needs to retain that trademark dark purity and intense focus to be recognizable as the long-established character. The slight fuzziness around the bleak edges as she develops genuine friendships is already enough of a risk, without throwing romance into the cauldron.

Enid picked up the romantic slack for most of the season but I was interested to hear her tell Agnes, the one, very strong, Season 2 addition to Team Wednesday (Sorry - I think I mean The Nightshades.) she was done with boyfriends for a while. Whether that's a marker for the future, meaning a further pullback from romantasy, or just a wobble for Enid before she gets her romantic mojo back, I guess we'll find out next season. She's not going to be going on many dates as an Alpha werewolf who can't turn back into a girl, though, so there's that to consider.

Agnes, the human equivalent of a set of skeleton keys, makes a much better showing (Ha!) in the second half of the season. I found her a little one-note in the first but as she reveals just a little of her background and personality she becomes considerably more interesting, not to say poignant. Her rapprochement with Enid was sweet and quite touching although I'll miss those little spats, pitting Enid's spluttering lupine outrage against Agnes's cloying, passive-aggressive sarcasm.

Pugsley remains as pointless and charisma-free as ever, but since that's his well-established personality I suppose we can't complain. By the end of the season I was feeling slightly more sympathetic to him so there's some progress but I could happily do without him from now on. Morticia and Thing continue as before although it was a surprise for a disembodied hand to get an actual character arc. I'm betting Lurch will get one eventually. He certainly hasn't had a lot to do so far.

Perhaps the greatest revelation was the reason for Gomez's lack of paranormal abilities. I have always wondered just why he's part of the outcast world but now I have two valid explanations. Firstly, as Morticia says, it's a matter of attitude, not aptitude, and secondly he did used to have electrical abilities like Fester and Pugsley, so in some odd way he almost represents a disabled Outcast. All this lore fill-in is fascinating. I can take plenty more as the series goes on.

One thing I tried to notice was whether having an episode be directed by Tim Burton made any appreciable difference. I'd like to think that, if it did, I'd have been able to say afterwards which specific episodes he helmed but I don't believe I can. I'm looking at the credits now and I see he directed the final two, which I did think were the strongest of the whole season, but I'm not sure how much that had to do with the direction as opposed to them just being the climactic drawing-together of all the plot points.

And those plot points were tied up neatly enough, if not with a pretty little bow. There were a few loose ends left dangling here and there but only enough to give the writers of Season 3 something to grab onto. I found the whole thing a deal more satisfying than I expected after what felt like a relatively baggy and incoherent first half.

It does make me wonder how smart an idea it was to split the season in the first place. I realize it was done for commercial rather than aesthetic reasons but in retrospect I wonder if it might have had the opposite effect from what was intended. I can imagine a few Wednesday fans feeling somewhat less invested after watching episodes one through four, left perhaps not as excited as they could have been for the rest.

If the whole thing had either dropped week on week for a couple of months or landed in a big, binge-friendly block, I suspect the story arcs might have felt more coherent (Or noticeable, even.) and the sense of anti-climax that came with the end of the first half might not have been felt, or felt so strongly. It'll be interesting to see if Netflix goes the same way next time.

Of course, that's likely to be at least a year from now. It's a long time to wait, isn't it? I don't think I used to notice these lengthy gaps so much back when all TV was broadcast in real time. Now, in the age of on-demand entertainment, it does feel very strange to have to wait so long.

In the mean-time, though, there's apparently an Uncle Fester spin-off in the works. Too much to hope it'll be that Fester/Wednesday double act I was wishing for earlier. (When I wrote that yesterday I didn't know about the spin-off, either...) but I'll take it as it comes and gratefully.

To conclude, as a whole, I was happy with Wednesday Season 2. I'd like to re-watch it without the hiatus to see if it does, in fact, hold together better that way. But not right now. 

I have a lot going on, as you might tell from the reduced output here at the moment. This should have posted yesterday, neatly on a Wednesday, but outside factors intervened as I imagine they will continue to do for the foreseeable future. I might have to miss more than the odd post. Or maybe not. We'll see how things go.

Wednesday Addams' Half-Term Report

So, I watched the first half-season of the second series of Wednesday. Is it okay to review half a season? I guess so, if that's how it comes.

There seem to be a whole slew of different ways streaming platforms choose to parcel out the goodies now. 

At one extreme there's The Online Box Set deal, where the whole season gets dumped onto the service on day one. Up at the other end, there's Let's Pretend It's The Nineties, when a single episode appears on the same day of the week, every week, until it's all over. 

A lot of people like the Box Set approach and it does have the merit of allowing viewers the choice of how to pace things. It's up to you to binge-watch or show some restraint. My preferred cadence is one episode a day so it works for me but it's obvious why the streaming platforms don't always want to do it that way. It front-loads views hugely and almost invites people to watch and wander off. 

On the other hand, it's like doing a cannonball into the cultural pool. It gets everyone's attention. That has to be good for attracting new subscribers.

Letting the season play out old school, the way the networks used to do, risks annoying the impatient but also locks everyone in for however many weeks the season lasts, which is presumably good for holding on to the subscribers you already have, always assuming you don't piss them off so much, doing it that way, they jump ship anyway. 

Having grown up with most shows playing out weekly, I'm generally fine with it. Plus if it's not a show I feel super-strongly about, I generally have the self-control to wait until all the episodes are available and then watch them one-a-day, as is my wont.

In between those extremes come the always-annoying variations, where several episodes drop at the start and more follow, sometimes one a week or in pairs or who the hell knows what. If anything's likely to make me not bother getting started, it's three episodes today then one a week for three weeks, then two together at the end. Just stop it!

Wednesday didn't go for any of those, opting instead for half the episodes now and half in September. At least, I'm assuming it's an even split. That would be eight episodes and eight is one of the common runs these days. That or ten. It's always an even number. 

I haven't checked because I'm trying to avoid spoilers and every time you run a search on anything there's a risk. You'd think just the number of episodes would be safe but who knows? 

Oh, alright then. I'll chance it...

Yep. It's eight. I squinted at the screen and that's all I saw, so phew! Got away with it.

And that would be an appropriate point for me to issue a SPOILER notice I guess. I have no idea what I'm about to write next but it's a fair bet it'll have some details that anyone who hasn't yet watched the first half and plans to won't want to know.

 

Hah! Can't miss that! I did say I wasn't exploiting the full range of visual options on the blog, didn't I? 

So, what was it like then, Season Two, Part One? 

Good, I thought. Very good, even. I watched the four episodes in four consecutive evenings and really looked forward to it each time, which is the proof. 

They're all an hour long, give or take a couple of minutes, but they felt shorter, another good indicator of quality. I also did absolutely nothing but watch the screen for the whole hour each time, by which I mean my mind didn't wander at all. Immersion was high.

The first episode began with a recap, which I certainly needed. Even as I was watching it I could barely remember most of the plot from last time. That has a lot more to do with my non-retentive memory than how memorable Season One actually was. 

I had already read that Wednesday's putative love interest from Season One, Xavier, wasn't coming back, thanks to some purported indiscretion by the actor. This is what I mean by spoilers being hard to avoid. 

I was surprised when the script dealt with his absence in the first episode. I thought they'd just pretend he'd never existed. Apparently he's off at some Swiss Finishing School for Outcasts so theoretically he could return, possibly recast, but I don't think anyone's likely to care enough about the character to want to bring him back. I can't really remember who he was anyway.

What I do remember is that in Season One there seemed to be some element of attraction between Wednesday and her roommate Enid. A lot of people were shipping them by the end of the season, to the extent that the producers came out and stated fairly plainly that it wasn't happening. 

I think they said then that they were rowing back on the whole romance thing, at least where Wednesday herself is concerned. It certainly was a major theme of the first season, who she might want to let into her closed circle of one. And the retrenchment does indeed appear to have happened. There's still a romance sub-plot but it's all focused on Enid and her competing beaus, the snake-hair guy from the first season, who has plenty of brooding personality and some teen-werewolf male model, who so far has the charisma of wet sand but who Enid is not unreasonably attracted to, given his dark good looks and general werewolfiness.

I'm rooting for snake-hair. He has good comic timing and a nice line in internalized angst and there's some chemistry between him and Enid that's absent between the would-be consenting werewolves. Clearly I don't like him enough to remember his name, though. Let me check... oh god, it's Ajax. No wonder I forgot. Who could take that seriously?

I did enjoy the various shenanigans with Enid and her two suitors but it leans very heavily into sitcom territory, which is somewhat true of the show as a whole. Of course the Addams Family has always been a sitcom at heart. I do find that easy to forget sometimes.

Speaking of the Family, they're much more present this season, with Morticia and Gomez moving into a lodge in the school grounds for wholly unconvincing plot convenience and Pugsley joining his sister as a student at Nevermore, ditto. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who I have never noticed, let alone rated, as an actor, makes an excellent Morticia, although I felt she was softening a little too much towards the end.

 

Luis Guzman as Gomez is... well, I guess Gomez is supposed to be unsettling. I'm still wondering what his quirk is, too. The global population in Wednesday-world is divided into Normies and Outcasts and every Outcast appears to have some paranormal ability but what Gomez's gift might be I still have not the slightest idea. Other than a taste for eating bugs and rats, something he shares with Pugsley, who can also generate electricity like his uncle, but surely eating bugs isn't enough on it's own. I mean, we're all supposed to be doing that, now, aren't we?

Pugsley is annoying but, again, Pugsley is meant to be annoying. He's been teamed with Eugene from the last series as some kind of double act that doesn't entirely come off. Both of them seem to have aged by about five years over the summer holiday, too. Someone does actually mention it at one point, which is good. It's impossible to miss so best make a feature of it.

Just about everyone from the first season, other than the aforementioned Xavier, returns. We'll be here all day if I go through the whole lot of them but I will just say I was surprised and delighted to see Christina Ricci pop up again, reprising her role as Marilyn Thornhill. I thought we'd seen the last of her and it seems highly unlikely we'll see any more now, after what happened in Episode 4, but I guess when you have magic in the mix you can't rule anything out.

New in the mix are Steve Buscemi, hamming it up big-time as the new Principle, Billie Piper, playing a music teacher, Joanna Lumley (With an American accent.) as Morticia's mother and Christopher Lloyd as a head in a jar. On wheels. The producers have suggested there may be seven seasons of Wednesday, which clearly suggests it's going to turn into another Harry Potter Retirement Plan For Ageing Character Actors but that's fine by me. They all put on a good turn.

Oh, and let's not forget Agnes, Wednesday's lower-classmate, super-fan and rival for the role of creepiest student on campus. I'm not sure about Agnes. She's a fun character and her invisibility affords her endless plot opportunities but the more we see of her, the less invincible Wednesday appears and I've always felt that invincibility, along with inscrutability and total lack of affect, are what makes Wednesday, as a character, work so well. 

Agnes gets the better of Wednesday altogether too much for my liking. Also, how the hell did she contrive to hang all those knives from the ceiling in the bell-tower and how did a slight, thirteen year-old girl manage to knock out two werewolves and transport them from Wednesday and Enid's room to the top of said tower? The way it's all done quite overtly off-camera suggests no-one in the script conference had any idea either.

The plot as whole, it must be said, does not bear too much close examination. I could pick on any number of threads and pick them into holes. Also, the main villain of Season One Part One is not so much a Big Bad as a Minor Threat. I'm guessing they're saving the real villain for Part 2. 

Which I am very much looking forward to watching. For all its glazing over awkward plot points and not making a whole lot of sense most of the time, Wednesday is a show bubbling over with pleasures. The script is consistently amusing, there are some good visual gags and character after character has me wishing they'd get more screen time. 

Jenny Ortega, who I probably should have mentioned earlier since it's her show, continues to be the perfect Wednesday Addams. Also, she's really short, isn't she? Now half the cast has grown up a little, it's hard to miss just how tiny she is. 

Possibly my favorite character, though, is Uncle Fester. He was always great in the original black and white series and Fred Armisen does a fantastic job of re-creating exactly that vibe. He and Wednesday seem like a natural team, too. The flashback to Wednesday, looking about eight years old, driving the getaway car as Fester robs a bank was a highlight of the half-season.

Part Two arrives on 3 September. I should have finished watching it by the end of that week. Expect a second part to the review to go with it soon after. 

The Horror! The Horror!

What would it take to get me to resubscribe to Netflix, which I put on pause two months ago? 

Yeah, that'll do it.

That's the first six minutes of the second season, apparently, which makes it one heck of an in media res opening, if true. Also hooky as hell. It's like a series of riffs on the character but then that's what the entire Addams Family franchise is built on, so give the people what they want I guess.

It's certainly what I want although I was very suspicious at the start. I'm not a big fan of plotlines involving serial killers and it seemed a bit off-brand for Wednesday. The six minute clip sold it, though. Now I'm wondering if the plan is to transition Wednesday into some kind of crime show: Wednesday Addams - Psychic P.I. That would be a swerve.

 

Nah. I think we're good. Back to school we go. Wednesday Season 2 starts tomorrow.  

Of course, the other thing that would have gotten me to re-sub would have been the final series of Stranger Things, now due in the autumn, I believe. I came very late to that one. It had been going for a couple of seasons before I started watching (Didn't have Netflix before then.) and it turned out to be nothing like I expected. 

 Stranger Things has such a long, convoluted narrative arc I really ought to do some kind of a rewatch before it starts up again. But who has the time? Even this super-condensed catch-up compilation for just one season of Wednesday is twenty minutes long!

That's the thing about TV series - they take soooo loooong to re-watch. Which is one reason I'm becoming increasingly fond of novelizations. It's a form so disrespected it barely merits contempt in literary quarters, where its very existence is seldom acknowledged. It's something the authors who work in the field appear to find exhillaratingly liberating. 

The more adaptations and spin-off novels I read, the more I come to realize how much I've been missing by ignoring them all these years. As I said back in February, I recently read the three adaptations of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a show I very much wished had lasted longer than the four seasons Netflix allowed it, and they were excellent. So were most of the Buffy novels I read. 

I have just acquired a Stranger Things novel - Rebel Robin - which I haven't started yet. If that's good I'll see if I can find the rest of those and then after that I might start on Roswell and/or Roswell: New Mexico. It's amazing how many shows do get longish runs of throwaway paperbacks dedicated to them.

Curiously, all of the shows I've named so far, with the possible exception of the Roswell twins, are more than arguably part of the broader horror genre. Although I have always said - and believed - that I don't like "horror". I'm slowly coming to realise that doesn't seem to be a position well-supported by the evidence.  

Indeed, it was only in the last couple of weeks, as I was digitizing and editing one of the two novel-length pieces of fiction I wrote in the 'nineties, that it occured to me both of those could quite reasonably be described as at the very least horror-adjacent, if not straight-up genre horror. There's certainly a lot of ritual and blood magic, demonic possession and vampirism going on, anyway. Weird I never noticed it at the time. I think I thought I was writing urban fantasy.

SciFi, horror and super-hero TV shows often end up being adapted into video games too, although I would suspect with considerably less artistic success than most novelizations. The stakes there must be many orders of magnitude higher - it costs a lot to make a video game, a lot of people are involved and visibility is very high. Spin-off novels, by contrast, cost next to nothing to produce, have only a couple of people making the decisions on what goes into them and release to a deadening critical silence, even if they sell really well. 

With that in mind, I wouldn't put a great deal of confidence in the quality of the proposed video games Netflix is reportedly planning to spin up out of some of its most successful properties, Stranger Things among them. I'm sure we'd all love a Secret World style game set in the Stranger Things universe but I somehow don't think that'll be what we get.

All the same, best to never write anything off until you've had a good look at it. That's a lesson I'm learning all the time. 

Apparently I like horror now. Who knew? 

Certainly not me.

You Watch Too Much TV, You Play Too Many Games

Friday, huh? I feel a Grab Bag coming on...

Cancelled Netflix Shows

So, I saw this on NME. Depressing, right? Of those fifteen cancelled shows, I watched and enjoyed four: Raising Dion, The Imperfects, Space Force and Fate: The Winx Saga. Of the four, one was tight, well-crafted and highly professional, one a little loose around the edges but fundamentally sound and two were sloppy and chaotic but still fun. 

I thought Raising Dion wrote itself into a corner it was never going to find a way out of, although you could argue that, like Cloak and Dagger, it was another superhero show that spent two whole seasons on an origin story and then folded before the first real adventure. 

Fate: The Winx Saga was yet another supposedly dark, edgy teen-oriented reimagining of a much-loved children's show. The first season was so clunky and shambolic I was amazed it got a second. The second season was, if anything, even less believable than the first but it did seem to be developing some internal momentum that might carry it forward.

Key to both shows were likeable characters. That's the main reason I enjoyed them and stayed with them. Unfortunately, likeable doesn't sell. It may also be the reason Space Force didn't make it. That was a very well-crafted, well-written, well-acted, grown-up show, genuinely funny throughout. I suspect it was also just too amiable to generate much of a commitment from the audience. You always felt it was nice while it was playing but you wouldn't really miss it if it wasn't there. And now it's not and I don't.

Of the four shows, the only one I'm mildly annoyed to see cancelled is The Imperfects. I thought it had real promise and it certainly didn't suffer from the "too many likeable characters" problem. The opposite, if anything. Mostly, I wanted to see more of Rhys Nicholson, an astonishing screen presence of whom I had been hitherto unaware. I did a bit of googling on them after the show ended and found out they're an Australian stand-up. I really hope they take on more acting work.

Of the other eleven shows Netflix cancelled, I was thinking about watching only one, The Midnight Club. Guess I won't bother now. It's funny but when I'm considering watching something that's not brand new these days, I routinely check how many seasons it ran and if it's only one I don't even bother. Which is nuts.

Wednesday

I think I'm safe with this one. As I write, it's still #1 on Netflix UK. It's a major hit and even now I get some spurious "news" item about the show in my feeds pretty much daily. People just don't want to stop talking about it. I haven't heard if the second season has been commissioned yet but I assume it's a lock-in

I really liked the show, which was smart, funny, sharp and good to look at. I'm not exactly sure why it's been so well-received, other than the obvious name recognition of the title character with eighty-four years of history behind it. It didn't seem to be obviously superior to a number of other teen-inflected fantasy/horror series I've watched, particularly The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or Riverdale, both of which began in a similarly grounded fashion, before spiralling into glorious insanity.

Once again, the absolute highlight of the show was the excellence of the performances. Jenny Ortega was pretty nearly perfect in the lead and Emma Myers equally brilliant as her friend and roomate Enid. I particularly enjoyed Gwendoline Christie as Principle Weems, so it was a big disappointment when... okay, no, I won't go there. I guess there may still be someone reading who hasn't watched it yet.

Probably the biggest surprise for me wasn't anything to do with the twisty plot. For the record, I worked out who the real villains were well before the end. I assume we were meant to be one step ahead of Wednesday all along. When it comes to High School P.I.s she's no Veronica Mars, that's for sure. 

No, the thing I wasn't expecting was how convicing a Morticia Catherine Zeta-Jones would make. It's a shame she was only in a couple of episodes. I hope she gets more screen time in Season Two. Luis Guzman was great as Gomez, too. He looks very much the Gomez from Charles Addams original New Yorker cartoons, although I have John Astin's suave, sophisicated take on the character from the sixties' TV series so firmly embedded in my brain, the transition took a bit of getting used to.

Wednesday the show is a gloriously female-led affair but I think it would have helped if the male romantic leads hadn't been quite so wishy-washy. It's hard to see why any of the girls would give them the time of day. As has been pointed out pretty much everywhere, there's close to zero chemistry between the would-be romantic couples, while you could power the Christmas lights of a small town off the electricity generated every time Wednesday and Enid get together. I'm totally shipping Wenclair for the next season. If Wednesday's going to break character for anything, it ought to be that.

And finally, I lied when I said Catherine Zeta-Jones performance was the biggest surprise. That had to be the scene where Wednesday first meets Eugene at the beehives. It was one of those "Wait... is that? It frickin' can't be!" moments. Moosa Mostafa, who plays Eugene, was also Nasir Roman in The Last Bus, a show I described as being like "something the Children's Film Foundation or the National Film Board of Canada might have made in the 1970s".

To see him pop up in a major U.S. show like Wednesday, in a significant supporting role no less, was positively bizarre. He was great, too, albeit playing almost exactly the same character as he played in The Last Bus. Apart from a tiny role in a Christmas movie as a background character who doesn't even merit a name in the credits, those two shows seem to be his entire career so far. I wonder if he can play anything else?

Other TV Stuff

On Amazon Prime I finished the first three seasons of Veronica Mars, every episode of which was genius. The fourth season wasn't included for some reason, so I did a little investigating of my own to find out why. That turned into a whole thing, which I'm not going to get into here except to say what kind of dimwitted network exec cancels a show like Veronica Mars, ffs?

I ended up subbing the Lionsgate channel, which used to be Starz, because that's where Season Four is playing. I already used up my free month of Starz back when I was watching Doom Patrol but luckily there was a three months at 99p a month deal going on so I took that. The second and third seasons of Doom Patrol are on there, too, so it's a steal.

And of course so far I haven't watched a single show on Lionsgate. The fourth VM season apparently feeds off the movie, which I have on DVD, so I need to watch that first but so far I haven't made the time. I'd better get on with it. The clock's ticking.

On Netflix I watched Exception, a pretty good anime Science Fiction show that ended in a way I didn't like. I'd recommend it all the same. I'm also re-watching Parks and Recreation, whose characters are nowhere near as likeable as I remembered. Might explain why it ran for seven seasons. Still funny, though.

I had to take a break from The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself, not because it isn't excellent, which it is, but because I was finding it just too intense to watch, right before I was supposed to be going to sleep. Of course, it's fatal to pause anything mid-run. Now I've fitted something else into that slot and there's no room to ease it back in. I guess I'll have to watch the rest of the season in the daylight. That's going to be weird. TV is for nighttime.

The show that replaced Bastard Son in my schedule was Wednesday and the show that's replaced Wednesday is One Of Us Is Lying. I was a little surprised there was a second season because it's based on a book, the plot of which Season One followed closely, and that book has a very definite conclusion. The showrunners have done a fine job of coming up with a way of keeping the whole conceit going, albeit somewhat at the expense of realism.

The least useful criticism of any work of fiction, however, is "Well, that would never happen." Fuck realism. All that counts is internal consistency. Nail that and we're good. I think they've managed it although it's been a close call at times. Still a couple of episodes to go and I have to say I almost want to go to bed early some nights just so I can find out what happens next.

I probably watched some other stuff but if I did it hasn't stuck. 

New Games For Next Year

Yesterday I only had one multiplayer online title to look forward to. Now I have three. 

The one I had is Nightingale. I declined to apply for the alpha/beta because of the NDA so I'm reliant on press releases but my decision not to participate has had an odd effect on my interest and involvement with the title. I'm still just as keen to play it when it arrives but since I decided not to get involved I find myself shying away from any news I see about the game. I was going to link one of the latest videos, which I haven't watched, but now it comes to it I don't even want to do that much, so I won't.

Instead, I'll link one for a game I wasn't planning on playing at all: Blue Protocol. I knew there was a hype wave building for it but it hadn't swept me along... and then I saw this morning that Amazon Games have picked it up for worldwide publishing next year.

That means I won't have to set up a load of new accounts or email addresses. Well, I hope I won't. I should just be able to use my existing Amazon credentials. It's astonishing what a psychological difference that makes. I wasn't keen and now I am.

Game looks good, too. The weirdly filmic flatness of it is intriguing. I'd like to see what it looks like from the inside. It's free, anyway, so why wouldn't I try it?

And finally, a game I had never heard of until a few hours ago but for which I have now submitted a beta application: Wayfinder. It's being developed by Airship Syndicate and the people behind Warframe, Digital Extremes and it's "a character-based, online action role playing game", which totally sounds like a thing.

I wouldn't have been particularly interested but then I looked at the promotional screenshots. Once again, that's a place I want to see from the inside. It has housing, too, and it's going to be on Steam, so there are a lot of plusses. Whether they outweigh the negatives (Seems like grouping is strongly recommended and I never really got on with Warframe) I guess I'll find out in testing - if I get in. 

If I do, I'll be sure to post about it here, always assuming I'm allowed. If I'm not then I suppose I won't bother. Testing, that is. Or I might. I'm fickle that way. Depends on the fine print in the NDA, if there is one, which you can bet I will read thoroughly. Well, skim, at least. Let's not go overboard.

That's enough for one Friday, I guess. Time I went and played some games.

Monday, Friday. Wednesday.

It's Monday. What better time for one of those Friday Grab Bags?

Let's start with a quick What Am I Playing? I don't generally do those, although generically the entire blog is one infinitely extended WAIP post, I guess.

Mostly, it's Lord of the Rings Online and Noah's Heart. I have now logged into Noah's Heart every day for nearly four months, which must put it right at the top of the stack for imports I've played. I've certainly spent more hours in other Korean or Chinese games but I can't think of any I've played for this many consecutive days.

LotRO is also doing me very nicely right now. I'm in the happy position of not being able to get as much time in the game as I'd like (Too many hours dog-walking and doing other real-life stuff.) Much better to want to play more than you can find time to fit in than not feeling it at all, I think.

In terms of blogging, though, I'm not getting much in the way of ideas from either of them at the moment. On the contrary, I actually find myself preferring just to play without thinking about whether something I see or do might make a post. I guess that's a good thing although I'm not entirely sure.

Other than those two, I dip into my Steam and Amazon Games libraries now and again, mostly for a quick fix of point and click adventure. I finished the third title in the Secret Files series a week or so back. I think it must have been some kind of bonus episode because it was maybe a quarter the length of the first two. It was also a lot easier. Either that or I'm attuned to the house style, now. Whatever, I didn't need to resort to a walkthrough even once, which might be a record.

I also finished a free title, If On A Winter's Night, Four Travellers, which I came across somewhere. I forget where so if it was on your blog I apologise. It was very moody and atmospheric and the ending blindsided me completely. I even liked the pixel art. I may be softening on that aesthetic. Or crumbling.

Other than those, I've popped into Chimeraland and Guild Wars 2 briefly, mostly to pick up freebies. I haven't logged into New World for a couple of weeks but I haven't intentionally jumped ship. I need to pop into EverQuest II to do the last of the panda quests, too. I think that's about it.

With that out of the way, let's move on to What I'm Not Playing. Dragonflight. 

Well, obviously I'm not playing a million other games too but the new World of Warcraft expansion is the only we care about, isn't it? I'preparing myself mentally for the next couple of weeks, when Dragonflight is going to be all anybody wants to talk about.

I almost certainly wouldn't be playing it anyway, of course. I have literally never bought or played a WoW expansion at launch, so it would be disingenuous of me to claim any moral high ground. Still, I do find it a little unsettling just how completely the game and the company behind it have slipped back onto almost everyone's "currently playing" list. Has anything materially changed? Would we even know if it had?

I was planning on re-assessing my position when the Microsoft buyout went through, which I thought would have been before this. Now it looks as if it might not happen at all. I wonder where that will leave us all? 

I'd be fudging if I said I wasn't interested in playing Dragonflight at all, though. Most of the things I've read about it make it sound more attractive than most previous expansions the game's had. More laid-back, less hyperactive, dare I say more casual? I'd be curious to see how that impression stands up to experience, although maybe not curious enough to pay for the damn thing. Looking forward to reading some reviews from people whose experience and judgment I value.

What I Might Be Playing comes next. I'm not talking about the obvious EverQuest II expansion, due at the end of the month. I'm thinking of the Mistlands update in Valheim.

I'm in two minds about it. I'd like to see the new content but I definitely don't want to start over. I tried that a while back and it absolutely did not take. Fortunately, there's still a good portion of my original world I haven't opened up yet so I'm hoping there will be some patches of Mistland in there, somewhere.

I was very impressed with the promotional video. The thing certainly captures a mood, that's for sure. Iron Gate are quite adept at getting more out of less. I could do with fewer fast cuts but I can see why they wouldn't want to let the camera linger on some of the shaky graphics.They always look much better in game.

How about What Am I Watching? I'm glad you asked! The same as everyone else, of course - Wednesday, currently #1 on Netflix UK.

Bit of an open goal, really at least where I'm concerned. I've been a low-key Addams Family fan since childhood. It was a show I always tried to watch back when it was there or thereabouts new. I much preferred it to the Munsters, which I liked but, even as a ten-year old, found a bit silly.

I saw the first two Addams Family movies at the cinema although I kind of lost touch with the franchise after that. I also loved the unofficial Adult Wednesday Addams YouTube shorts, as has been evidenced here these last two Halloweens. 

I'm also a low-key Tim Burton fan, although I don't like everything he's done. I was a bit wary when I heard he was behind this latest addition to the chronicles. He's a little too... colorful... sometimes. 

I'm delighted to say all such fears seem to have been unfounded. I'm four episodes in and loving it. I'll save detailed comment for when I've seen the lot but I'll just say that if you're not watching it, you probably ought to give it a try.

Lastly, What Am I Planning? Something! Nothing original, for sure, but something I haven't done here on the blog before: a Musical Advent Calendar.

Yeah, right. Like I have any idea how to set that up. No, what I'm planning is a post a day from the First of December to Christmas Eve, each with a single Christmas song plucked from YouTube. Nothing too obvious but also nothing completely unlistenable. I've already packed away the first dozen and I can tell you, they're thick on the ground already.

I got the idea from the surreal sight of the two remaining members of Run-DMC, now in their mid-50s, performing one of my all-time favorite Christmas tunes, Christmas in Hollis, as part of The Wonderful World Of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration. You couldn't, as the saying goes, make it up.

It won't be instead of regular posts. It'll be a bonus. A gift, if you will. Or, indeed, if you won't. It'll be fun, anyway. For me, that is.

You'd Be Prettier If You Smiled.

For reasons that now escape me, back in February I decided to post the first season of Adult Wednesday Addams. I must have been having one of those weeks...

I was complaining in the interstitials about how the web used to be more fun. I asked people to recommend ways it still might be, in the comments.

No-one did, of course.

I also asked if someone would be kind enough to remind me to post Season Two for Halloween.

No-one did, of course. I remembered, anyway.

At the time, I mentioned how surprised I was to see these dark gems still gleaming, up on YouTube. I'm doubly surprised, today.

I thought the imminent arrival of Tim Burton's Wednesday might have hammered in that final nail. Apparently not.

Wise move, Tim. You wouldn't want to tick Wednesday off, now would you?